Different Stars
by songbirdgirl
Summary: This is a sequel to my story After Journey's End, so if you haven't read that first you probably should. This is rated M for sexual content in the first chapter and probably later chapters too. I will post as often as I can. I do not own the characters, just the plot of this story. Enjoy? Please R&R!
1. Chapter 1

It's amazing how quickly the human mind can change emotion. The Doctor says out of every planet he's been to, he's never met another species that can be so emotional. I was angry with Dad when he sent me off on an errand, and after I realized the Doctor had gotten to come home a week early, I was ecstatic. I called Dad to tell him we wouldn't be coming back to the office, and we set off straight home.

The sky was a rare blue, and there was hardly a cloud in the sky. The windows were down, and the breeze flitted the Doctor's hair around his face. His grin was huge and contagious, the kind of grin that perks up any day. The kind of grin that made my stomach flip. For the first time, his eyes met mine and I felt hope well up, like this could be the start of something new, something _more._ The things I had done with the old Doctor weren't undone; they still were an important part of who I was, but this was the chance for things to go in a direction they never could have if I had stayed in the other universe.

It would have taken me a much shorter time to go straight back than it had taken to get there, but we decided to take the long way since the day was so beautiful. We avoided any touchy subject, such as his departure or the time we spent apart before he was created, so instead he told me stories I had never heard him tell before. After a time I was so involved I didn't realize where we were. I had made a wrong turn and almost left the city, and we were headed down a road that looked a little over-grown and less used, but it was quiet and pretty so I followed it. After awhile we came to a run down house with a nearby lake. Suddenly, I was hit with a wave a deja vu, and, unable to focus on anything else, was forced to pull over.

I explained what was going on to the Doctor, who started rambling on about time travel and deja vu, but it was hitting me in this rippling way that made paying attention to his words impossible. After a moment, it passed. I thought the area was a beautiful one, and said as much, so we searched the boot and found a blanket. We trecked down to the small lake and spread it out. The house and car were still barely in view, and there were woods nearby. We could hear birds and bugs but nothing in the way of traffic. We laid back on the blanket, he took my hand, and continued his stories. He told me about his life before the war, spoke of friends and places I had never heard of before. The afternoon was warm, so I pulled my shirt up to let the sun tickle my midriff.

Eventually, I began to focus less on his words, and more on his fingers tracing patterns around my belly button. His fingers started peaking further under the bottom of my shirt and soon he lost track of what he was saying as well. He took of his shirt and I walked my fingers down his back, feeling every ridge in his backbone. I felt his shiver, and then all I could feel was his fingertips under the top of my jeans. His face was close to mine, and I reached out to delineate the edge of his ear with my tongue and his shudder was the end of taking our time.

Our clothes didn't come off slowly like our first time together. We were sober but more certain and less cautious and more frantic, and his mouth was on mine and my arms were around him and my legs were around him and then he was _in_, and we were one, under trees with only the birds and the lonely windows of an abandoned house to see. I could feel the pounding of his single heart like it was my own, and his skin smelled warm like sunlight and it didn't last long, but that didn't make it any less perfect. And we dressed and I laid my head on his chest and he put his arm around me and stroked my hair and I fell asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

When I woke, I had one of those strange moments where it was light when you fell alseep, but you wake to find it dark. I was also slightly confused about where I was and why I was outside, but the memory flooded back quickly. I turned my head to find the Doctor watching me.

"You looked so peaceful, I hated to wake you."

"Mmm... I didn't realize how tired I was, but I haven't been sleeping very well while you've been gone."

"Why is that?"

"I've been having really vivid dreams. They make me restless, and all the tossing and turning thoughout the night makes me wake feeling like I've hardly slept."

"Hm. How did you sleep with me here?"

"Really well. I don't think I had any dreams at all."

"Actually, dreaming is a side effect of conversion of short term memory into long term memory storage, which is done during each sleep cycle with more efficacy so technically, you dream every sleep cycle, so it's not if you _dream_ or not, but if you _remember_ your dream or not, Rose Tyler," he finished with a deep breath and a grin.

He said it all so fast I couldn't help but laugh. He leaned down and cut it off with a kiss that I got a little more caught up in than I meant to, but soon enough I realized just how dark it was and we gathered up our things and headed back to the car. I was putting the blanket back in the boot, but when I looked up, he was off a ways.

"What are you doing?"

"Come over here and look!"

He was looking through a dirty window into the little house that had kept watch over our afternoon. I peered in as well. The whole house was a little dirty and sad, like it had stood empty for too long. But under the neglect, it was a nice little house. It had a run down fence, and an area that was at one time a garden, before it was left to go wild. As we circled around the place, we discovered a chimney, and that the whole place had pretty lattice windows. There were two floors, and the whole thing was built with pretty stones. Underneath the dirt and disrepair, it was actually quite charming.

"You know, it wouldn't take that much to get it into shape," the Doctor said. "The chimney is still solid, and the foundation looks good as well."

I looked at him, surprised. "Since when do you know about houses?"

"I know all kinds of things Rose Tyler."

That grin.

"I just remember a time when you couldn't imagine living in a house is all."

"And I remember a time when I thought I was going to have to live without you. What about this house?"

He caught me off gaurd. I blinked. And again. And a third time.

"This...house?"

"Yep. This house. Do you like it?"

"Well, yeah, but... to live in?"

"Yes. That's what houses are for, aren't they?"

"Well, yeah. But I don't have money for a house."

"I have money. On that card Pete gave me? Accounts. Lots, apparently."

I looked back at the house. Something stirred inside me.

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"Ask me again."

"Do you want to live in this house with me?"

"Yes!"


	3. Chapter 3

I was nervous about the Doctor driving, but my mind was still thick with sleep, and he said he was a good driver, so I let him. He actually wasn't bad, and we made it home without much of anything interesting happening. I was dreaming of sliding into a hot bath when we got home, but once we arrived, that didn't really end up being an option. Tony had gone in the backyard and gotten to close to the shed and something had happened. Mum couldn't stop crying, but Dad explained everything the best he could.

It seemed that he had gone into the shed and, seeing the coral glowing, reached out and touched it. How long it had been between him touching it and Mum finding him, no one was sure, but he was running around like... well, like he was on fast forward. It took the Doctor about an hour to sort it out, and when he did, he told me it was time. I didn't understand a lot of the tech talk he used as he explained the next part, but it was basically a long jumble that meant we needed to plant it in the ground.

"However, it should be done somewhere rather permanent," he informed me. I took a slow, deep breath.

"Let's go talk to Mum and Dad."

The conversation went as well as could be expected, which was not very. Dad was very confused and Mum was upset. I thought she might cry, but she just got shrill. She had worried about me the whole time I had traveled with the Doctor, the whole time we had been here, and the whole time we had been looking for the Doctor. Now she finally had me back, safe and home. Dad was confused about us finding a place so quickly, and concerned about who owned it and the condition it was in. It was finally decided that we would all go look at it the following morning, and then Dad would use his connections to find the previous owner. The Doctor and I agreed to replant the coral into a bigger pot until then.


	4. Chapter 4

**(A/N: Wow Guys! Long time no post, huh? Why post now? Well, jessholder19 favorited this story last night, and I was like, man. I should thank her by updating! So thanks jessholder19. I hope you enjoy the chapter. Also, ****£692.26=$1000, and the law mentioned below is a real law on the books currently that I researched, and you can look it up, if you want, by googling Empty Dwelling Management Orders. -SBG)**

Mum was easily appeased when she saw how easy it would be to fix it up and how close it would be to where they lived. Dad was still unsure about the whole thing, and was uncertain how we would figure out who owned it. He thought he would end up having to pull strings through work to find out who owned it and how to contact them, but it ended up being much easier than that: one afternoon in the office of planning and building, and we found it.

Apparently, the owner was a Welshman named Cecil Maddox, who lived in America and never visited or used it for anything. The Empty Dwelling Management Orders allow the government to take possession of an abandoned property if it has sat empty for two years or longer. Normally, they contact the owner, and work out a plan to put the building back into permanent use in 12 months, while obtaining the owner's consent to rent it in the interim. If no agreement can be made, the government makes another EDMO, this one lasting seven years, and the owner loses property rights. Within seven years, the government will find new owners for the house.

However, when Mr. Maddox was contacted, and had the Orders read to him, and was informed that a young couple would like to move in and fix it up, he immediately offered to sell it. He only asked for £692.26. It was nearly unimaginable to pay someone so little for a house, but he told us that he had lived there with his wife and his daughter, and one day, he came home to find his wife and daughter had left him. He had no heart to go on living there with the memories, but hoped it brought us more happiness than it had him. We thanked him and got off of the phone. I know I felt bad for him, in the back of my mind, but it was so hard to control the bliss bubbling up inside my chest. I couldn't help myself- I grinned over at the Doctor.

"Are you ready for an adventure?" he whispered, and he took my hand.

His lawyer handled the proceedings. We signed the paperwork by the end of the week, and had the keys by the start of the next, and headed straight over. The Doctor was ready to move in right away, but, as I explained to him, it was far from inhabitable at the moment. The garden was large but dead. The inside was dusty, with peeling wallpaper, and a family of mice in the pantry. None of the lights worked. Three of the windows were broken. The kitchen sink only ran brown water. When we opened the cupboard to take a look, we found a nest of large spiders. I realized we were not prepared to tackle this yet. We retreated back to Mum's clean and mercifully spider-free kitchen for breakfast to make a game plan.


	5. Chapter 5

***A/N: Hey guys! So, here's the deal. Fanfic doesn't let you post links to other websites, and it doesn't let you post pics in your chapters. If you'd like to see the floor plans and the outside of my imagined cottage for Rose and Tentoo, pm me and I will send you the links and a description. It's beautiful, too, so I highly recommend you message me and check them out! Also, in England (and lots of other places) the first floor of a house is called the ground floor, while the second floor is called the first floor. Also also, please review!- SBG***

Mum made sautéed mushrooms, grilled tomatoes, baked beans, fried bread, chips, sausages, and tea. It was delicious, and like she hadn't seen us in weeks. She had really learned to cook since we had left home! I realized we would have to come around more often if this was the welcome we were going to get after one morning away!

We sat around the table and considered the house. It was a small two story, with a small porch. When you entered the house from the front porch, you entered the dining room. This room contained the chimney, and led into the kitchen, which lead into one of the common rooms, and had the stairs that led to the first floor. They were divided by an island. Off the common room was the garden room, and down the hallway was a bathroom and another common room. The garden room had large windows, and two doors that lead out to the garden. The stairs led into a large landing room that could easily be converted into a bedroom. That led into the master bedroom, which had a bathroom. Back outside, there was the large dead garden and the little yard, and the property was surrounded by pine trees that created a natural barrier between the house and the small lake we had seen on our first visit. Back in the very back of the yard was a small storage building, kind of like a shed. And that was everything. It had stood empty for four or five years now, and we had our work cut out for us.

I got a piece of paper, and we made a list of everything that we knew needed to be done on the ground floor. It was such a mess, we had never even gotten to the first floor. The entire place needed to be dusted and vacuumed, and the wallpaper needed to come off. The walls would either need to be re papered or painted. The sink cupboard needed to be de infested, as did the pantry. The other cupboards needed to be inspected as well. The sink needed to be repaired, and the other sinks needed to be checked. The windows needed to be replaced, the light bulbs needed to be replaced (the electric had been turned on, but the lights still didn't work. I was really hoping it was just the bulbs), and the bathrooms needed to be cleaned. We didn't even know what we needed to do to prepare to tackle the first floor, but I figured we'd have to check the closets upstairs as well as down, and clean the bathroom, take care of the walls, and the floors. We gathered the supplies we'd need, thanked Mum for breakfast, and headed back over.


	6. Chapter 6

Cleaning is rarely fun for the people involved, and never for the people it is being recounted for. There were, however, some interesting highlights. I wouldn't go in the house until the spiders were gone. The Doctor also took the mice out into the trees and set them loose for good measure. After that I agreed to go inside and we started scrubbing. He peeled off faded wall paper and I scrubbed grout, and he fixed the issues with the sink. We patched the broken glass. It took three days before we were ready to start painting. In an upstairs wardrobe, we found a dolly. It was one of the old kind, where the whole body was soft and made of cloth. The hair was made of string, and the face was either so worn that it was gone, or it had never had one at all. It made me uneasy when I found it, so the Doctor took it out with the rubbish.

We painted the rooms on the fourth day and started to shop for furniture. The back common room was turned into a sort of office, with shelves and tables and plenty of space for tinkering. The front one was turned into a lounge. Upstairs, we moved our things into the bedroom with the bath attached. And then, we were home.


End file.
